Microbursts are the Worst

As the weather becomes more and more extreme with high temperatures and low dew points, the potential to blow your cool is a summer reality.  Chinese herbal self-help tools can provide a way to chill out in the face of peculiar patterns so you don’t explode. Stress is a constant part of the climate of life and learning how to deal with it will have lasting benefits.

Oriental medicine can be thought of as a science of relationships. The relationships and informational exchanges between the organ systems are thought of as more important than the organ systems themselves. "Communicating with essence" is about a very primal relationship between the patient and the essence or field that surrounds and sustains us. To the Oriental medical doctor, there is no real individuality. We exist within a field, a framework. We take in nourishment from this field and we, in turn, influence and feed this field. It is a blockage or an occlusion of the primal relationship between the self and the sustaining field that is the essence of disease. We are either protecting ourselves excessively from this field or attempting to separate ourselves from life. This causes us to figuratively and literally starve since this field also provides nourishment.

It is more important to identify where your stress resides than its source. A good herbal formula in the Oriental medical model will build basic personal strength so we can have this relationship with what is outside of us, as opposed to fueling the false protection that feeds the undernourished.

Today in our society there seems to be an emphasis on the individual standing alone. From a different perspective, from an old, old culture, that sort of individual focus would only be destructive to the individual in the long term. Such a focus would ultimately lead to the loss of sustenance for the individual. We must honor from where we came and from where we are going. We can only do so from a platform of strength and not from fear. You can ride the roller coaster of the downdrafts or coast with the air currents.

Anticipation is paramount. Keeping relationships intact is much easier than repairing them once they have broken down. In the same way that you tend your friendships with attention and kindnesses, you can nurture yourself. Slowly releasing pressure through a good cry, a long walk, or escape into a great novel, will keep your root in solid. As the Tao Te Ching says, if you stand on tiptoes, you don’t stand firm.

Letting go gradually rather than in an outburst is usually a more considered kind of expression.  Anyone in a relationship knows that there is a constant give and take. It’s that way with your health also. See what you truly need and then dare to give it to yourself.